Super weird. My laptop had a new enough GPU that Windows didn’t even have proper drivers yet and it worked out of the box on Linux.
Super weird. My laptop had a new enough GPU that Windows didn’t even have proper drivers yet and it worked out of the box on Linux.
Seriously. I’m running the same version of the same distro on machines manufactured over a decade apart. And even if my distro dropped support for my older machine in its next version, I have 10 years to find a replacement.
I thought this was ridiculous but the kitty cuddles while playing sold me.
So “warm plugging” is a thing - it means a piece of hardware is detachable while the machine is asleep.
FWIW Plasma 5.27 works very well on Wayland with AMD GPUs. The fact that desktop mode uses x11 is probably not related to them still using Plasma 5. I would guess once KDE announces an LTS version of Plasma 6 (possibly as early as 6.2?) they’ll upgrade Steam OS to that.
EA is continuing to do what they’ve always done - attempt to suck up as much money as possible. It just so happens that for once they think being less shitty is the best way to do it. Don’t hold your breath about this being a trend.
In cases like what you listed I believe they normally mark it as playable with a note that the button names might not align.
Yeah, I think their rating of unsupported is correct. It’s pretty easy to play with the default configuration though (touchpad as mouse).
Which one of the three games I listed are you talking about?
I don’t want to argue the semantics of whether or not it is a handheld PC
And yet that’s exactly what you’re doing, and missing the forest for the trees as you do so…
If it’s “just a handheld PC,” how do I setup cups as a service that starts on boot?
The answer: as a minimal change I have to enter developer mode and understand that the next update will wipe that away. (If I want to use it for this purpose regularly, it’d be better to install another OS, at which point you might as well call the Switch a handheld PC too.) This is a limitation of the Deck, but it’s a very intentional one. It’s a gaming appliance first and foremost, which makes the comparison to other gaming appliances apropos.
Are “Steam Deck has X many games that Valve have certified on it, up from Y 17 minutes ago” articles particularly useful? Only really to people who are using them for ad revenue. But that doesn’t make the comparison to the Switch a bad one. In fact, comparing the Steam Deck to the Switch is a better comparison than comparing it to a gaming desktop.
Form factor very clearly isn’t the only consideration though, and when combined with the other factors it becomes very useful. The comparison here is of two devices for playing video games, and form factor makes a difference there. Back in the early 2000s, people weren’t really comparing the GBA to the PS2, the Xbox, the GameCube and the Dreamcast. These simply were different markets. Likewise, the Steam Deck and the Switch are more comparable than the Deck and the PS5 specifically because of form factor, even though as computing devices the Deck and the PS5 are more similar (both are running custom AMD Zen 2 CPUs with custom RDNA 2 GPUs, for example). The Steam Deck is, in practice, only slightly more “a PC” than the PS4 is.
Doesn’t matter for how they’re measuring. None of those games are marked as either Verified or Playable by Valve, so they’re not included in these statistics, despite working fine on the Deck.
Yeah, a few examples from my own Deck include Rymdkapsel (works perfectly, not verified or marked as Chromebook Ready), Surviving Mars (playable, but not rated) and Turmoil (explicitly unsupported, but works fine).
Are you trying to equivocate motherboard form factor (a specific terminology used for the sizes and locations of screw-holes in motherboards) with entirely different types of device that happen to have similar shapes and sizes?
The motherboards in those computers could have the same motherboard form factor, but that doesn’t make comparing a rack-mounted router with specific design constraints to your gaming PC a reasonable thing to do. Your gaming PC is, most likely, far better at its job than a router in a data centre would be, and the DC router is most likely far better at its job than your gaming PC would be, because they’re totally different categories of device. Likewise, a Wifi router and an Xbox are totally different categories of device. Even discussing just form factor alone, the Wikipedia summary you posted includes:
other physical specifications of components
An Xbox lacks many of the things considered as basic functionality for a router, such as a second Ethernet port. Likewise, a wifi router tends to lack many of the things considered crucial for modern game systems, such as a GPU and video output. In both cases it’s perfectly possible (at least in theory, though I’m sure at least one person has actually done it) to reconfigure one for the alternative purpose, but that is utilising the device well outside of its design parameters.
What I’m saying is that the PC comparison simply misses the point, whereas the Switch comparison is a comparison of how the devices are intended to be used (and for the most part actually used). The Steam Deck is not a good device for running a development environment or most of the things one thinks of as “PC tasks.” It’s not designed for that.
One can use it in that way, but one of the biggest differences between the Steam Deck and its “more pc-ish” competitors like the Ally is that Valve has done a lot of work to make desktop mode unnecessary for the vast majority of users. The user experience puts it much more directly in competition with the Switch than with other handheld PCs, and that’s a strength of the Deck, not a weakness.
One can install Linux on a Switch too, at which point it’s basically an ARM-based handheld PC. But a reviewer who reviewed the Switch for its power as a handheld Linux machine would be missing the point too.
Yeah, the market for those handhelds seems to be people who either specifically want Windows or want better specs (or think they want that), but don’t mind the trade-offs.
Honestly, I’m not too sure how much price goes into it. I’ve used several of the Steam Deck competitors, each with better specs. But each has a worse overall experience. Each of the people I know with one of the competitors seldom uses it. But even the people with Steam Decks who planned to use theirs only for travel have ended up using them far more than they intended. My Steam Deck has become my primary gaming machine. I’m not sure how a hardware company competes there without working with a major game store, but I don’t really see Valve being particularly opposed to working with hardware companies to provide Steam OS builds for competing hardware since it pushes their platform.
Personally, I don’t think Epic is in a position to make a really feasible Steam Deck competitor, partially because they’ve gone all-in on Windows, and the break from Windows is one of the things that’s allowed the Steam Deck to have its great experience. The only company who can really customise Windows to that extent is Microsoft, and they’d likely rather make an Xbox handheld than work with Epic on a Windows-based one.
While the Steam Deck is technically a handheld PC, as a Linux enthusiast who’s tried to use the desktop mode for laptoppy things… No it isn’t.
It works in a pinch (well… Not for my job, but I also don’t expect Valve to put lxd into SteamOS), but the comparison to the Switch (which I also own) is much better than comparing it to even a gaming laptop. In fact, if I were the type of person to emulate stuff (which, don’t worry Nintendo, I totally am not), I would say my Steam Deck makes a better switch than my switch. If I’d emulated a Switch to play Mario Kart (which obviously I haven’t) I’d say it was a better experience on my Steam Deck than on my switch.
Valve are one of the major reasons that Microsoft’s attempts at the iOSification of Windows failed. Their investments in Linux are directly aimed at preventing what Apple is doing.
Tim Sweeney is a freeloader depending on companies like Valve to protect him from these threats to his company.